Impuesto a las empresas líderes inflacionarias: Una política contra la inflación de la codicia y la puja distributiva

Abstract

Inflation caused by market power abuse is a kind of crime that harms societies but it’s not punished –and therefore not deterred– because the abusers evade the responsibility attributing it to other determinants of inflation. That is why these inflationary behaviors are persistent and this source of inflation is fought in the same way that doctors treat unknown infections, using broad-spectrum antibiotics, i.e., contractionary policies, which are ineffective and sometimes counterproductive in curbing inflation. In this work, we develop a protocol to identify the leading inflationary companies and propose that they be held responsible for their socially harmful behavior by applying a surcharge to the income tax, which will serve as a specific antibiotic, without side effects, directed at the core of the problem of inflation caused by market power abuse. Our simulations indicate that this policy could reduce inflation by between 20 % and 30 % annually, and that the contribution to the income tax of these leading companies would increase by between 11% and 50% in Argentina and 43 % in Colombia. This mechanism would be an important stimulus to induce changes in behavior of these leading companies and would allow for generating revenues to finance remediations.